


The First Cut is the Deepest

by gambitspryde (beaches_at_treasure_island)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: 71st Hunger Games, 74th Hunger Games, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/F, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, Pain, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates can feel each other's strong emotions, Soulmates can share dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaches_at_treasure_island/pseuds/gambitspryde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss is five when she finds out that one day she will compete in the Hunger Games so that she can meet her soulmate. She's thirteen when she figures out who her soulmate is. Johanna is seventeen when she enters and wins the 71st Hunger Games. Katniss is relieved she wasn't chosen that year. But now it's the day of the Reaping for the 74th Hunger Games and Katniss has a bad feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. CHAPTER ONE

Having a soulmate was a dangerous thing for Tributes, especially those who became Victors. The Capitol would control their pawns by using their other half against them in the cruelest of ways. Not everyone was born with soulmates these days. In the last century or so, just before Panem was united, the rate of newborns with soulmates declined, until less than three percent of the population had them.

Katniss was almost five when she could first read her soulmark for herself. She refused to let anyone else read it for her and struggled to learn to read as quickly as she could.

_Isn't my costume awful? My stylist's the biggest idiot in the Capitol. Our tributes have been trees for forty years under her. Wish I’d gotten Cinna. You look fantastic._

The words were written in sharp, spiky, cursive letters across the small of Katniss’ back. With sad eyes, her father had carefully written them in uniform capital letters on a spare bit of precious paper for his beloved daughter. When she had finally read the words, she’d turned to her dad, who looked as though the sun would never shine again.

“Daddy? What’s wrong? What does it mean?”

“Nothing, Kitty-cat,” he’d murmured with a forced smile. “It looks like your soulmate is going to be in the Games one day, probably from Seven, and you as well. I can only hope you’re in different years, baby girl.”

He’d gone out hunting later that day and came back with a basketful of sweet, ripe berries and the promise to teach Katniss how to hunt.

oOoOoOo

Katniss was eleven when her father died in the mines. There was an explosion and nobody made it out alive. Her mother fell into catatonia, leaving Katniss as the head of their household with her seven year old sister to take care of. But the meager amount of money they had left wasn’t enough to feed them.

For a week after the money ran out, Katniss would give Prim what little food she could obtain and lie about having eaten already. Sometimes her friend Madge from school, the Mayor’s daughter, would sneak her a sandwich that she would share with her sister but she felt guilty about taking charity from her friend.

After not eating for more than a week, Katniss knew she couldn’t live like this much longer. She didn’t want to give up but she had no options left to her. She was too young to take out slips for tesserae. She had months until she could.

Instead, Katniss weakly wandered the town in pouring rain, praying for a miracle. She had been sitting against a tree near the bakery to gather strength to return home when she saw the baker’s wife drag her youngest son outside by his ear, yelling at him for burning bread that they now could not sell. She demanded he feed it to the pigs they kept, then retreated inside to the dry, warm shop.

The boy glanced back to make sure his mother wasn’t paying attention, then tossed the two burnt loaves at Katniss’ feet before dashing inside.

Next to the loaves was Katniss’ other saving grace, the one that would allow her to feed her family in the long term: a dandelion.

oOoOoOo

Johanna was fourteen when she had taken out her first tesserae. Her older brother was too old now to do so, and her family, while not the worst-off, was still hurting for food occasionally. She was hungry all the time now, but it didn’t feel like _she_ was hungry, and her mother said it was because her soulmate didn’t have food in their belly.

Her soulmate needed food, badly, and Johanna wasn’t sure how to help. She didn’t even know who her soulmate was, only their words.

_Yeah, he's been helping me design my own clothing line. You should see what he can do with velvet._

Maybe she would meet a clothing designer? But there was no inter-District travel except for Peacekeepers and those associated with the Hunger Games. Peacekeepers only came from Two, though, and cloth was from Eight. Johanna hoped her soulmate wasn’t in the Games. She hoped she, herself, wasn’t in the Games, either.

oOoOoOo

For more than six years, Katniss’ father had taught her to hunt, to trap, to fish and swim. She knew the forest on the other side of the fence well, but it had never occurred to her to hunt for herself. Her father had always made her promise to not go out there alone, but now only she could do it.

She tested the fence by throwing a stick at it before she ducked under, just like her dad had taught her to. Remembering where her dad would stash their bows and arrows, she softly walked through the woods towards the hollow log. She found the bow her father crafted for her, still nestled safely in the fallen trunk, and a salvageable net to fish with. She knew what plants were edible and where to find them, and had a small amount of wire with which to set snares to catch small game. With these skills her father had taught her, in the event that she went to the Games, she would feed her family in his stead.

oOoOoOo

When Johanna was seventeen, at her second to last Reaping, she knew. She knew that this year was hers. She’d known from the moment she’d been checked in to the Reaping. With heavy heart, Johanna stood with her year-mates in the crowd of potential Tributes and prayed uselessly to not be chosen, to not be Reaped.

It didn’t work.

oOoOoOo

Katniss watched the screen as the Tributes from the other Districts were Reaped, one by one, waiting for Seven’s chosen Tributes to be shown. She knew her soulmate was a Seven, but she prayed that they would never be Reaped. Every year, Katniss watched Seven’s Reaping attentively, though not patiently.

She was thirteen when she felt her soulmate’s fear and pain, overwhelming, almost debilitating. Mournfully, she watched as the two Sevens stood on the stage. The boy was a cocky, arrogant thing, puffing himself up proudly as he stared directly into the camera. Katniss supposed it could be an act, but he didn’t look smart enough to be her match, nor skilled enough.

The girl, Johanna Mason, looked terrified, cowardly, but not hurting like her soulmate felt, except there was something about her eyes. Something in Johanna’s eyes felt like the deep soulful agony Katniss felt. She wondered if Johanna’s words lent credence to what Katniss’ implied, that both they and their soulmates would be chosen for the Games.

Katniss stood in her District’s crowd of possible Reapees with dread. _Not this year_ , she pleaded silently to whoever might be listening, _please not this year_. Beside her, her friend Madge grasped her hand tightly, and if she craned her neck, Katniss could see her new friend Gale Hawthorne staring worriedly over at her.

oOoOoOo

Johanna knew the best way to survive the Games was to act as though she was a cowardly piece of shit. It was her only chance. If she acted as though all she could do was snivel and hide then maybe she had an opportunity to return home and, one day, find her soulmate. She was certain that none of the other Tributes for the 71st Hunger Games were her soulmate.

In the Training Center, she feigned being weak, unable to hold a weapon properly, unable to set a fire or pick out poisonous plants from edible ones. She pretended to learn about knots and rope-work but shied away from letting the others see her strengths.

The day the Gamemakers scored the Tributes, Johanna requested a large log and an axe. She faked having to make too many hits to cut the log in half, despite being able to split it in one, and didn’t have to act overjoyed when she scraped by with a score of five. The score was high enough to not be too low to be hunted down initially, and low enough to not be seen as a problem to the Careers. In other words, she was forgettable. Perfect.


	2. CHAPTER TWO

Katniss watched the Games every spare moment she had, not just during the required hours each day. Johanna had escaped the bloodbath, and had gotten the hell out of dodge. Shots of her were few and far between; the Capitol thought she was boring and useless and didn’t see the point in showing her often.

Katniss didn’t care. At any second, another Tribute could happen upon Johanna and that would be that. With bated breath, Katniss watched from the town square as Johanna finally emerged from her hiding place.

oOoOoOo

Johanna didn’t come out of her hidey-hole until there were less than a handful of Tributes left in the arena. With the axe she had retrieved during the initial bloodbath at the Cornucopia, Johanna went after the remaining Tributes, the Careers that had underestimated the weak little girl from Seven. Not so weak now, Johanna skillfully whacked the head from the final Tribute with an exhausted grin as she felt her soulmate’s utter relief.

It was over. She could finally go home.

oOoOoOo

Katniss cheered softly in her silent home that night, preparing a feast of venison for her family in celebration of the Victory of the girl she believed to be her soulmate. Johanna was witty and strategic and patient, everything Katniss wanted in a soulmate. She had bided her time, waiting until the other Tributes had mostly taken care of each other, then pounced like a wild cat.

Yes, the Games were horrible, and what Johanna had done was gruesome, but they had no choice. Everyone from the Districts knew that they only served as pawns in the Capitol’s Games. Johanna had fought so that she would live, and Katniss understood, just like she understood that one day it could be, would be, her out there.

But for now, she took comfort in knowing that Johanna Mason of District Seven had become the Victor of the 71st Annual Hunger Games.

oOoOoOo

Johanna had felt her soulmate’s joy as the Capitol doctors checked her over. Besides some slight dehydration and malnutrition, and a sprained ankle, she had come out of the Games unharmed. Except she wasn’t really unharmed. No, most scars that came as a consequence of surviving the Games were not physical.

oOoOoOo

Johanna cried silently as she threw the last shovelful of dirt over her brother’s grave, where he laid next to her mother and father behind their new house in the Victors’ Village. If she had known. God, if she had only known what Snow would do, she would have done what he’d asked. She would have whored herself out to the Capitol residents if only she could have saved her family. How was she to know that Snow would send his goons to kill them in cold blood just because she refused to fuck his highest bidders?

She’d refused for her soulmate, the one that she was about eighty percent sure that Snow didn’t know of. Johanna wanted to only ever be with her soulmate but hindsight is twenty-twenty and she would have done anything to save her family.

But it was too little, too late.

oOoOoOo

Katniss awoke a month after Johanna had won from a dream that wasn’t a dream. The nightmare had crept up on her unexpectedly, starting out as watching her father being trapped in the mines. It morphed to her being trapped inside with him as the shaft exploded, and she was tossed through the sky into Johanna’s arena.

Then she was wielding the axe that Johanna had carried in the Games, and one by one she murdered the twenty-three other Tributes, then Johanna’s parents and her older brother – who Katniss only knew from the family interviews broadcasted from the Capitol – were standing in front of her and they kept asking her why, why did she not follow Snow’s orders?

oOoOoOo

Johanna stared out into the empty woods from her room’s balcony with confusion. She didn’t know where that dream had come from, or at least not the first part.

Sharing dreams with a soulmate one had yet to meet was rare, but it wasn’t unheard of. Mostly, soulmates would only share strong feelings or emotions, like joy or agony or hunger to the point of starvation.

But the dream... It was a coal mine, one that had exploded, or perhaps collapsed.

Was her soulmate a Twelve? The only coal mines in Panem were in District Twelve. Who was that man? Was it her soulmate’s father? Their brother?

But at the moment, none of that mattered.

Johanna cursed. If her soulmate was a Twelve, that meant she would have to be in the Games to meet Johanna.

Then she remembered the Victory Tour.

oOoOoOo

Katniss sobbed for the Victor from Seven as she watched Johanna perform the Victory Tour with anger and pain, knowing that Johanna hated every second, hated what she’d done in the arena, and hated having to act proud and boastful for winning. Most of all, she knew Johanna hated the Capitol for what it had done to her and her family.

The deaths of Johanna’s family had been marked as accidental, hazards of working as lumberjacks and paper-makers. Katniss knew otherwise, having realized that her nightmare was a shared one, confirming her suspicion of being Johanna’s soulmate.

Katniss had hidden in the crowd when Johanna had come to Twelve. She knew that it wasn’t time for them to meet, not yet. As much as she wanted to run up to her soulmate and hug the life out of her, she would wait.

oOoOoOo

Johanna spat out rehearsed fake-sorry lines at each District with anger. She was pissed, and rightfully so. The Capitol had taken practically everything from her, save for her soulmate. She couldn’t even lay claim to her own sanity these days, not when her head was so fucked up from what horrors she’d committed in the arena and from seeing her parents and her brother lying dead in District Seven for her disobedience.

In District Twelve, Johanna calmed her anger, tempered it in her distraction as she searched the crowd while she robotically recited the written lines she’d been given. She scoured the crowd for her soulmate. Where were they? Where was her soulmate when she needed them most?

oOoOoOo

That night, as the train took Johanna away Twelve, away from Katniss, the younger girl lay in bed, wondering what might have happened if she’d leapt forward, if she’d screamed out to Johanna.

But she already knew.

The Peacekeepers would have intervened and the outcome would have been less than desirable.


	3. CHAPTER THREE

The next two Reapings were uneventful, with Seam kids mostly being chosen as usual. They were, of course, the ones who took out the maximum amount of tesserae slips and therefore had the most Reaping slips in the glass globes each year. However, other than a passing acquaintance, Katniss didn’t really know any of them, and that was all for the best, really.

But this year, Katniss was sixteen and if by some luck she wasn’t chosen, she had two more Reaping to go. But Katniss believed her luck had run out. It didn’t help that despite it being Prim’s first year, with her name only in there once, Katniss still worried over her baby sister.

 _God forbid that anything should happen to Prim_ , Katniss vowed.

Katniss’ name was in there twenty times; she had a much higher chance of being chosen, though there were others with even more slips. Gale, one of her best friends, for one; he had his name in the boys’ glass ball at least forty-two times. By your last year, however, one could have up to seventy-seven slips with their name on it if they took out the maximum allowed tesserae (ten per person per year), although it was rare.

Peeta was only in there five times, being from a Merchant family. Since he’d saved her with the burnt bread, the two would sometimes talk, or sit together during classes. At lunch, he would join her and Madge Undersea at their table for the hour they were allotted. Katniss was hopeful that one day he’d become as close a friend as Madge or Gale. Still, although he wasn’t in the mix as often as Gale, Katniss worried for him. She hoped, like the previous years, that nobody she knew got Reaped.

          Katniss stared at the screen, biting her cheek to keep from smiling when she saw Johanna on stage in District Seven, no matter how angry and exhausted she looked. The next four Districts whizzed by as Katniss let her eyes bore through the screen while her mind wandered.

Then her District’s Escort, Effie Trinket began District Twelve’s Reaping, practically singing into the microphone in an attempt to make things seem more cheery. Katniss had to stop herself from scoffing when Miss Trinket spoke the hated, sugar-coated words produced by the Capitol’s script-writers: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

As always, the girls were chosen first. With bated breath, Katniss tensed for trouble. Something was going to happen; she could feel it.

“Primrose Everdeen,” Effie Trinket announced with a grin, not knowing that the girl’s older sister was on the verge of collapsing in grief and shock.

oOoOoOo

Johanna paused in the train’s corridor, one arm wrapping around her stomach tightly, and the other bracing her on the wall. She gritted her teeth as she hunched over, bent in half and trying not to scream from the grief in her gut. Deciding that it was more important to go into the other room and hope that she was wrong than to stand practically crippled by her soulmate’s emotions, Johanna shuffled into the next room, where a holoscreen showed District Twelve being Reaped. The videos were a few seconds off, allowing the Capitol to manipulate the broadcast in they saw necessary.

The Escort for District Twelve, a horridly pink Effie Trinket who wasn’t really as bad as Haymitch tried to pass her off as, opened the slip for the ‘ladies’, and called out a Primrose Everdeen.

A young girl began pushing her way through the crowd of twelve year olds. She couldn’t have had her name in the globe more than once or twice, yet she had the unfortunate, bad luck of being chosen at her first Reaping.

Suddenly, an older teenaged girl leaped from the group of sixteen year olds. “Prim!” The girl screamed in agony, the same agony Johanna felt. “Prim!” She had gotten to the younger girl, who had just arrived at the foot of the stairs, when the Peacekeepers converged on her.

The older girl shoved the twelve year old behind her as she screamed up at the stage. “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” The crowd fell silent, as did the others in the train’s viewing room. Johanna felt her soulmate’s grief taper off a bit, but it was still prominent, albeit quieter.

Effie beckoned the sixteen year old up to the stage as the Peacekeepers escorted Primrose back to her spot among the other twelve year olds. “Please state your name for the audience,” she instructed the girl.

“K-katniss Everd-deen,” the girl stuttered with subdued adrenaline.

“Well, I just bet that was your sister, wasn’t it?” Effie asked, playing to the Capitol crowd. “We can’t let her have all the glory, can we?”

This Katniss girl just stared at Effie in disbelief until the Escort looked away uncomfortably. Then, she answered the woman.

“I promised Prim that I’d keep her safe. Besides, it’s her first year. She’s only twelve.”

“Yes, well... Let’s everybody give a round of applause for our new Tribute.”

For the first time ever, not a single person clapped for the Tribute. Moments passed as they stared accusingly into the cameras, or worse, straight forward so not to give the Capitol any satisfaction, any amusement. Then, one by one, every person in Twelve’s Reaping yard raised the first three fingers of their left hands to their lips before holding them out to Katniss.

Johanna remembered that in Twelve, it was a signal of goodbye, something done at funerals or on the Victory Tour to remember the fallen Tributes from their District.

Katniss looked like she was going to cry but then Haymitch, drunk, smelly, lovable Haymitch stumbled over from his lopsided chair and slung his arm over her shoulders.

“Look at her,” he slurred into the microphone. “Look at this one!” He glanced down at her then said, “I like her! Lots of...” He paused, searching for a word that accurately describe the girl he was hanging onto. “Spunk!” He yelled triumphantly, having found it. Then, hoarsely, he added, “More than you!” as he let go of Katniss to lean forward and stare viciously into the camera. Once more, this time with more vitriol, “More than you!”

Before he could add another word, he overbalanced and fell from the stage to the ground, knocking himself out, the cameras following his every drunken move. Johanna wasn’t sure if he was faking it or not. She’d not yet gotten the hang of him as a person, but she wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t an act. But, she supposed, perhaps it was a good thing he didn’t get to continue. He could have seriously gotten himself into trouble with the Capitol.

As the cameras returned to face the stage, Johanna saw that Katniss had composed herself. _Good_ , Johanna thought, _don’t let them see your pain; they already think you’re soft. Don’t let them think you’re weak._

While the tactic may have worked for Johanna, she knew that Katniss was another story. She sacrificed herself for her sister; that wasn’t weakness, it was courage, strength.

Effie attempted to build the false cheer up again, but it wasn’t going to happen. Deflating, the pink Escort moved on to select the male Tribute of District Twelve. As Johanna watched her select a slip of paper, she felt her soulmate’s feelings, a sort of sinking one, like dread, which swiftly blossomed into something sad and resolute.

“Peeta Mellark,” Effie read on screen.


End file.
